And Then?
by Patchverse-SheCat
Summary: After Pyro leaves, Rogue goes after him and finds that she knows more about him than she ever imagined. Rated for language.


Disclaimer: No characters here are mine.  
  
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Author's Note: As I mentioned in my other two PyRogue pieces, there is just not enough Pyro fanfic to go around. Cheers to the Pyro fans.  
  
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It started so quickly. It started as a mild thrum in their ears, then towered off into a monolith of sound that beat their skulls in, threatening to burst every vein and break down every nerve. They screamed without voice, tried to block the pain by curling into fetal positions. To no avail. Outside, their friends were suffering the same. Their friends, and their enemies.  
  
Amazing what a fine line that was. Now that she could feel through their skin, hear through their ears, see with their eyes and think with their thoughts. It only made the pain worse as psyche upon psyche screeched with agony.  
  
It would kill them through their powers. Already Bobby was freezing himself, turning transparent, coating the jet with hoarfrost. He would turn the air too cold to breathe, even to him.  
  
And she, the Rogue, the one who'd never bend to anyone's rules, was going to die begging for mercy. Begging for mercy from all the voices in her head, the ones screaming at her to get them out of there, to help them. To die slowly by draining away her own life away. She was going to die, pleading to God to tell her how. Anything would have been good, anything to avoid this horrible pain.  
  
And then it was over.  
  
The voices stopped screaming in her head as Bobby wiped frozen tears and slime from his face. He made a move to wipe away hers, but she stopped him. For the second, he'd forgotten her mutation. Shivering, she raised her hand and brushed the crusted snot off from above her lip. After that, she stood up and walked towards the jet ramp.  
  
"Where are you going?" He asked quietly, still trying to regain his breath. "And what the hell was that?"  
  
She turned clumsily, knowing that she was losing time. The last voice in the back of her head was still screaming. No, crying. Crying like a lost child. "I dunno. I need to go find John."  
  
He looked at her quizzically, steadying himself against the wall. "Why?"  
  
"Because." She didn't dare tell him about the psyche in the back of her head, weeping. Mostly because she didn't even dare admit to herself that she was hearing it.  
  
Knowing better than to argue, he slumped down. Taking a long last look, clueless as to what this call was and why she even going, she walked down the ramp. It was colder in the jet than it was outside.  
  
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Finding John was easy. She hardly trusted her instinct, though it was invariably correct, and relied on footprints instead. Even without his soul in the back of her head, it would've taken a blind hamster to lose his trail.  
  
Standing off on his own, surrounded by a patch of earth and an endless expanse of snow, he looked like some silent deity. Well, he would have, had he not been wringing his jacket out. Around him, the ground had turned to mud. He himself looked like he'd just walked through a car wash. As he saw her, a smile lit up his wet features. She moved towards him, feeling the soggy earth squish beneath her feet. His body heat, at unnaturally high levels, had melted all the snow in a five foot radius.  
  
"You comin' with me?" He asked, exuding as much hope as heat.  
  
Feeling fairly straightforward, she countered. "No. Are you coming back, John?"  
  
His eyes narrowed. "Don't call me that."  
  
The flit of confusion was her only expression, but it soon faded.  
  
As if to explain, "I'm Pyro now."  
  
His absolute certainty was annoying her, and the water seeping up into her shoes was doing nothing to help. "Damnit, John. Why the hell are you coming out here in the cold?"  
  
"Funny. Doesn't seem that cold to me." He said, with more than a trace of sarcasm. "Unless you're too thick to figure it out already."  
  
Huddling her arms around herself to keep warm, Rogue glared at him. His psyche, the one in her head, her John, was wailing. If anything, it was the beginning of a headache. "You don't want to do this, John."  
  
Once again, he made a peevish expression at the use of his name. "I'm not John, damnit."  
  
"Just come back." She felt a numbing sensation in her nose. Whether it was the cold or the beginning of tears, she wasn't sure.  
  
"No."  
  
"Please. You're being stupid." On the verge of pleading with him, she still realized the truth. John -no, Pyro- had had his taste of power, and he'd liked it.  
"Am I, Rogue? Or are you just being weak?" When she failed to respond, he continued. "Unlike you, Roguie, I don't need Xavier to hold my hand all the time."  
  
It wasn't the words he said that cut so much as his tone.  
  
"Stop being a moron! If I had a deathwish I'd go with you, but I'm not being stupid!" Voice rising dangerously, she moved towards the pyrotic. He whipped out his lighter threateningly.  
  
"Fuck, Rogue. Who the hell put you in charge?" For several moments, they just stared angrily. The whistling of a helicopter broke their mental combat.  
  
Pyro grinned. "Guess that's my ride."  
  
She stared at him, disbelieving. She should have expected this, but it still came as a shock. In retrospect, what was he going to do anyway? Crawl to Stryker? Live in the snow? "You aren't really..."  
  
Another award-winning smile. "God, you are slow."  
  
Something snapped. Yes, John had crossed lines; yes, he was a jackass. Even so, he was her friend. And friends didn't leave each other for the Brotherhood.  
  
He seemed oblivious to the hurt look on her face. "Last chance to come with me." His hand flew to her arm and she batted it away, knocking the Zippo lighter into the snow. He sneered. "Or not. Go get screwed."  
  
He remained there, as if challenging her to pick up the lighter. Kneeling, shivering, she plucked it out of the snow. It was surprisingly warm in her hands. "John, don't do this."  
  
Shrugging, he turned away. The helicopter had landed.  
  
John, deep in the recesses of her brain, had slowed his crying. And for the first time, Rogue understood why.  
  
The one to never give in, the spitfire himself, have finally surrendered. And in his failure, he was trying to hold up the pretense that he was a rebel, that he was stronger than the rest when he had really taken the easy way out. Outside, he was the undeterred Pyro. Inside, he was the dying John. John knew the truth; Pyro didn't.  
  
Pyro. The god of flame had been both born and destroyed that day. As the figure of a renegade mutant disappeared behind the drifts of snow, so did John stop crying entirely. Try as she might, Rogue could no longer find him in her multiple psyches.  
  
All she could remember him by was the lighter now. .  
  
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She was glad when the interior of the jet had not yet warmed up. The tears that had just started clinging to her eyelashes froze there, and those were easier to wipe away. 


End file.
